Bouygues achieves 300Mbps with three-band CA

French telecoms operator Bouygues has successfully demonstrated three-band Carrier Aggregation (CA) technology over its commercial LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) network, in partnership with Qualcomm Technologies and Ericsson. The demonstration utilised 45MHz of spectrum in the 800MHz, 1800MHz and 2600MHz frequency bands and achieved download speeds of 300Mbps. The trial used a handset equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor with next generation modem, and the multi-standard Ericsson RBS 6000 radio base stations. The operator is aiming to commercially introduce three-band LTE-A in Lyon at the end of the summer, after the first compatible devices are made available in H1 2015.

As previously reported by CommsUpdate, Bouygues first trialled LTE-A technology in October 2013 and achieved downlink transmission speeds of 182Mbps. The ultra-fast broadband network, capable of theoretical download speeds of up to 220Mbps, was subsequently launched in the cities of Lyon, Bordeaux, Grenoble, Vanves, Issy-les-Moulineaux, Malakoff and Rosny-sous-Bois in mid-2014; the LTE-A footprint has since been extended to all of France’s main cities.